earlier this week, i rounded a corner in penn station and immediately had to dodge a large yellow puddle on the floor. as i passed, my eyes followed the puddle back across the floor to its source. a person, laying on the floor against the wall completely unconscious, possibly dying, probably already dead. then the smell hit me. i didn't have the measure of insensitivity necessary to snap a photo, but here's a sample from the internet.

one of the greatest injustices in the world, architecturally speaking (rob just 'my dad has cancer'd me) is the fact that there are black and white photos of what penn station used to be, lining the walls of what penn station is now. i am one of the forsaken 600,000 people that have to pass through this place every day, and i hate it with every fiber of my being.

the new york times has a piece today that explores some possible solutions:

Nearly a half-century has passed since the destruction of the great 1910 station designed by Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead & White, a “monumental act of vandalism,” as an editorial in The New York Times called the demolition in 1963. A vast steel, travertine and granite railway palace of the people, the old Pennsylvania Station had declined by the end into a symbol of bygone Gilded Age opulence. It was replaced by Penn Plaza and Madison Square Garden, Modernist mediocrities, erected to serve real estate interests, with a new subterranean Penn Station entombed below.

Some 600,000 commuters, riding Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit, now suffer Penn Station every day. That makes it probably the busiest transit hub in the Western world, busier than Heathrow Airport in London, busier than Newark, La Guardia and Kennedy airports combined.

To pass through Grand Central Terminal, one of New York’s exalted public spaces, is an ennobling experience, a gift. To commute via the bowels of Penn Station, just a few blocks away, is a humiliation.

What is the value of architecture? It can be measured, culturally, humanely and historically, in the gulf between these two places. (via)